An unusual study has recently been published by a prestigious Japanese institution that provides a league table of countries whose inhabitants break wind the most during sexual activity.
Study Details
The research was carried out by Kindai University (近畿大学) in Osaka Japan, formerly known as Kinki University. The English name of the institution was officially changed to Kindai (近大) in 2016, to avoid the implications of the word “kinky.” The lead researchers were Hugh Morris from the School of Medicine and Anthony Fardi from the School of Biology-Oriented Science and Technology. A report on the study appeared in Nihon Koshu Eisei Zasshi (Japanese Journal of Public Health, 2024, Volume 68 Issue 2 92-104).
I was curious about how the data was collected. According to the abstract, detailed questionnaires were sent to the sexual health and human sexuality departments of colleges and research institutes around the world over a 5-year period and a whopping 26,669 participants were included. The abstract noted that France was the only country that refused to join the study, so you’ll never find out how much the French fart during sex, unless you happen to have a lover from that country. Why did the French academics abstain from participating? After some digging, I found this quote from the dean of Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (now part of the Sorbonne): “Cette recherche est frivole et sans fondement,” he fumed.
Funding
If, to translate that complaint from France, the research was frivolous and without merit, I wondered why it was being done and where the funding had come from. Curiously, the study appears to be a partnership between Pfizer and the Japanese Department of Public Health. Apparently, Pfizer is collecting data to help market a forthcoming product, Bloatinex, a vaccine to prevent flatulence. Well, like many journalists these days, I was a little economical with the truth there. Actually, it’s not a vaccine. It’s an anal suppository to be taken once a month to maintain a wind-free life, presumably avoiding any embarrassing outbursts during intimate moments. There is a huge, lucrative market for a maintenance drug like this. Thank you so much, Pfizer, for your fart-fighting butt nuggets. I’m very grateful and hope I can afford the cost of this amazing innovation.
I first heard about suppositories when I was primary-school age on vacation with my family in Italy. My sister, who was a couple of years older than me, had an upset stomach and the local doctor prescribed suppositories. “Oh God!” She exclaimed after having the first one. “That pill was really hard to swallow!”
But I’m digressing. Let me get back to the results of Kinki University’s research about international variations in sexual farting…
Japan
Not unsurprisingly, Japan is at the bottom of the list, i.e., the fewest sexual farts. Perhaps this is because of the culture’s reputation for good manners and politeness. However, since the research was done by Japanese academics, there might have been some massaging of the results to put Japanese people in the best light. As the saying goes, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, in his excellent book, Doctoring Data, explains exactly how medical research can be skewed to produce exactly the results wanted by whoever is footing the bill.
China
Both the Peoples’ Republic of China and Taiwan are also near the bottom. Losing face is a big deal in those regions. Thus, lovers there are most likely to not only do their best to avoid noisy farts, favoring secret silent ones, but also might never admit publicly in a survey, even if it is supposed to be anonymous, that they have been so ill-mannered as to release wind. Furthermore, government officials in Mainland China are extremely averse to any negative publicity about their country, so they would be reluctant to let the world see their people as nothing but windbags.
Great Britain
Interestingly, my homeland, the United Kingdom, scores on the low side too. It seems that people just keep calm and carry on rather than producing a Great British fart. Perhaps this is because that stiff upper lip keeps Brits so tight-assed that nothing unwelcome could possibly escape during sexual congress. Indeed, I don’t remember much farting during my own upbringing and have no memories of my parents ever having sex. If you rarely have sex, there’s much less opportunity for windy lovemaking. All I know is that my mother and father must have had intercourse at least twice, because they had two kids. However, I didn’t take after them in either of those two categories. Firstly, I have most definitely engaged in sex more than twice. Secondly, rather than swearing like a trooper, I tend to fart like a trooper, and quite shamelessly. I even did a stand-up comedy routine about it. My wind production during sex seemed to dramatically increase after chemo I received following my second diagnosis of breast cancer. I included a section about this, entitled “Thar She Blows,” in the chapter about Sex and Cancer of my comic self-help memoir, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive After Breast Cancer and Infidelity.
United States
This is one competition that Americans might be happy not to have won. The US sits about a third down from the top. During sex, Americans appear to be neither heavy farters nor fart-free. Would the results change if different states were compared, so that perhaps, Texans or Californians might fart more than Iowans or Minnesotans?
Germany
Germany is in the top place in the table, just barely edging out Mexico. The two countries are almost neck and neck, or maybe I should say butt to butt. Germans are known to love sauerkraut and serve it with almost everything. Made from fermented cabbage, which is high in sulfur and histamine, it may cause bloating and flatulence in some people. Germans also love their sausages. These are known as wurst but are definitely not the worst in the world. As I found to my delight during visits there, wurst comes in many flavorful varieties and contains better quality meat than sausages in the United States. Nevertheless, wurst could cause indigestion if I overindulged. Since we’ve been talking about sausages, I should mention that I’m somewhat of a Frankfurter. My mother was a World War II Jewish refugee from Frankfurt and therefore I am 50% German. Perhaps that’s why I fart so much. I can blame it on my maternal lineage. However, there may be another reason why Germany tops the fart list. The Germans I know as friends are very down-to-earth people. A lot of their humor is about what comes out of your anus. They have no qualms about mentioning that part of one’s anatomy and thus would be more likely to respond honestly to a questionnaire about sex and farting than those from certain other cultures.
Mexico
Why is Mexico almost at the top of the sexual farting league? Maybe it’s the prevalence of beans in the cuisine. It could also be that Latin blood causes Mexicans to be more passionate and make love more frequently than, say, the bloodless Brits, which would create more occasions for farting during sex.
Why Do People Fart During Sex?
It’s a matter of simple mechanics. If you’ve got gas stuck in your bowels and you’re pumping away with each other putting pressure on that area, that gas is likely to find a way out. In fact, frequent sex might be a better remedy for flatulence than Pfizer’s Bloatinex. It will certainly be a lot cheaper, unless you have a girlfriend who wants you to take her out to a lot of fancy restaurants or buy her expensive jewelry.
Men vs Women
The research showed that men fart slightly more than women during sex. However, this may be because males were more likely than females to admit their flatulence on the questionnaires. Farting is not considered ladylike behavior in many parts of the world so women might be reluctant to say they do it, even in a survey that is supposed to be anonymous. Stephen G. Bloom declared in a February 2000 Salon article entitled “Dr Fart Speaks” that the world expert on farting is Dr. Michael D. Levitt. In December 2023, after almost seven decades of work as a gastroenterologist, and nearly 300 publications, many of them about flatulence, Levitt retired from his position as associate chief of staff at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center. One of his male patients had been farting more than 140 times a day and complained that this had ruined his sex life. The doctor discovered the man was lactose intolerant, and once he quit dairy, the patient’s wind production normalized. Levitt’s research showed that the average male fart contains a considerably greater volume of gas than that of females. Perhaps this is because men are generally larger than women and consume more food. Nevertheless, as Australian Men’s Health reported in May 2021, female farts apparently tend to be smellier as they contain more hydrogen sulfide. Small but deadly.
A Flaw in the Study?
I believe that the Kinki study may have greatly underestimated the amount of windiness going on during sex by having most of the participants be college students, with maybe a few teaching staff included. The study sample was too young. My gynecologist told me that women tend to fart more as they age, particularly past their fifties.
Why Do People Fart More as They Age?
According to WebMD, this may be because the aging digestive system becomes slower and less efficient, producing less stomach acid and fewer digestive enzymes. In addition, the increasing number of medications prescribed to older folks may also increase flatulence. Nevertheless, everyone, young and old, passes wind, and according to the British National Health Service, the average is five to fifteen times a day. Dr. Staller, quoted in the Harvard Health Publishing blog entitled “Feeling gassy — is it ever a cause for concern?” believes it is a fallacy that we fart more as we age: “Older people often just have an increased awareness of their gas, so it feels like they produce more.” He adds that it’s common for sphincter muscles to weaken with age, so people lose some ability to hold gas in, making it more noticeable, especially in social situations. Sexual activity may well be the most embarrassing social situation to lose that kind of control.
In my younger days I never farted during sex and would have been mortified to have done so. Now everything is much more relaxed, but I’ve become quite a windbag. Even so, one of the great things about sex in your later years is that, flatulent or not, the two of you realize you’re both old farts and that life is short. Therefore you might as well get on with it and enjoy each other while you still can, avoiding beans and sauerkraut if necessary.